Suffering

“Suffering” is for anyone who has dealt with severe, debilitating depression firsthand. This piece represents the close calls my depression got the best of me leading to attempted suicide.

The bottle of water, jar of pills, cacti, and wedding cake topper symbolize at time when I was finishing up my solo show in college right before my brother got married in Arizona. Overwhelmed with pressure and seemingly unmeetable expectations, I bought the largest bottle of water I could find and the largest package of sleeping pills the box store had to offer. The trouble is, I was more focused on the quantity of the package instead of the ingredients. When I groggily awoke shaken by my companion at the time, I soon discovered that I had consumed an entire package of all natural herbal sleeping pills, hardly the type that would end someones life.

A therapist described how my experiences resembled that of Lincoln’s, who dealt with severe depression, and lived with it as a dark passenger that followed him everywhere. The phone represents the first time I called the National Suicide Hotline, and the phone cord makes up the ring band. The abacus represents trying to figure out how many times I’ll have to cope with this risky threat during a lifetime.